Commercial Point mayor, police chief wage war of accusations

Holly Zachariah The Columbus Dispatch @hollyzachariah

Sunday

Aug 12, 2018 at 5:45 AMAug 12, 2018 at 7:06 PM

COMMERCIAL POINT — Long before a police sergeant slapped handcuffs on his own mayor and arrested him on a felony charge at Village Hall, it already had been a rocky several months between the administration and these small-town officers.

In February, the village hired an attorney — first at the request of Mayor Gary Joiner, and later at the direction of the village solicitor — to investigate management of the police department and the conduct of some of its officers. The attorney issued a scathing 25-page report particularly critical of the management style of Police Chief Adam Jordan.

It painted a picture of officers run amok, and detailed unprofessional behavior so bad that a nearby department refuses to even train with Commercial Point anymore.

That investigation and report, conducted and written by Cincinnati labor lawyer Douglas Duckett, also referenced sexual-discrimination allegations made against Mayor Joiner by a female officer and accusations that the mayor had an officer improperly access the state's law-enforcement database.

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In April, the Ohio Civil Rights Commission cleared Joiner and the village of any wrongdoing in the sex-discrimination complaint, but the allegations already had been made public and the damage had been done.

Then, last month, Joiner was accused of illegally dumping garbage at a private construction site in the village, and threatening the man who confronted him. That investigation of the mayor was handled by the same officer who had filed the discrimination complaint against him. Jordan, as chief, got involved, and he filed three misdemeanor charges against the mayor on July 27.

Just four days later, the chief tacked on a felony count of intimidation against the mayor, accusing Joiner of trying to get the witness at the construction site to change his story.

But, according to records released Friday in response to a request from The Dispatch, on the day that he was arrested, Joiner was at Village Hall for a meeting where the mayor planned to suspend Chief Jordan and start the process to fire him.

The mayor wrote that the chief had intimidated the witness in the construction site dumping case. Joiner wrote in the suspension documents, though he never had a chance to deliver them, that the construction-site employee didn't originally say he saw the mayor illegally dumping garbage, but that Jordan made him change his statement to implicate the mayor.

Despite all that, Commercial Point Village Administrator Ross Crego said the Pickaway County village of about 1,600 is operating just fine. He pointed out that there were more people at Monday's council meeting concerned about the cost of garbage collection than about the mayor's absence at the head table.

"There is a general lack of interest and people are going about their lives as usual," Crego said of the drama. "Regardless of what happens, the day-to-day functions are still the same."

Joiner has pleaded not guilty to the earlier misdemeanors, and the felony charge and a fourth misdemeanor have been transferred from Municipal Court to the Pickaway County Common Pleas Court for consideration for indictment. He could have been at council Monday night but chose not to be a distraction, Village Solicitor Mike Hess said.

"Gary is still the mayor and can conduct business," Hess said. He has, however, turned oversight of the police department over to council's president pro tem. The department, with an annual budget of about $421,000, has six paid officers and seven reserves in addition to the chief.

Hess acknowledges that some of what was in the February report from the investigator put the department in a bad light. Since then, he said, Jordan and two officers (including the one who filed the complaint against Joiner) have been disciplined.

In his report, Duckett wrote that Chief Jordan failed to discipline officers or rein in bad behavior. He wrote about officers sending one another photos of toilet contents, of "sexualizing the workplace," using obscene and offensive language, and bragging, even while in public, of sexual encounters.

"I understand a police department is not a Victorian drawing room," Duckett wrote, "but neither is it the Wild West for filthy talk where anything goes."

He also wrote about a time when, during a joint training exercise with Grove City police, the female officer shot Chief Jordan in the groin with an air rifle. A Grove City commander, Duckett wrote, was not amused, and will no longer train with Commercial Point as a result.

Jordan did not return calls for comment about the accusations against him, but said earlier that he is disappointed recent events have put the village in a "negative limelight."

"This is a major to-do. It's an embarrassment," he said. "Commercial Point is a nice community ... and I think the good events outshine the bad."

A second Pickaway County village, New Holland, also has a mayor facing felony charges as well as a former police chief.

Kent Scarrett, executive director of the Ohio Municipal League, said that two nearby villages in turmoil at the same time is mostly an anomaly. There are 700 villages in the state, and he called the people who run them "salt of the earth."

There are plenty of checks and balances in place — the locals who know everyone and apply their own pressure, county sheriff's offices, the Ohio Attorney General's Office and the Ohio Ethics Commission — to step in when things go awry.

"It comes down to the trust of the people who serve," Scarrett said. "You hope the community is being led by people of integrity."

hzachariah@dispatch.com

@hollyzachariah

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